Well, on election day Chris Matthews decided to grill Howard Dean about what the Democrats are going to do when they take over Congress, and we have an answer now. First up, they’re going to push for troop withdrawal in Iraq soon.

The Iraqi government must be told that U.S. presence is “not open-ended,” said Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat expected to be chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new Congress that convenes in January.

“We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months,” Levin said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Naturally, Bush and the boys are fighting it. I’m more than a little curious to see if this will ever come to pass. I’m not too optimistic, truthfully. And then there’s this:

The Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker, a former secretary of state with close ties to the Bush family, will not have its final report when it meets with Bush.

Instead the panel was expected to gather the views of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, at Monday’s meeting.

I have to admit, I don’t understand this at all. You would think that a study group concentrating on Iraq would meet up with Bush after doing a whole lot of, y’know, STUDYING. They’d gather all of the info and come up with a comprehensive report, then pow wow with the administration and come to some sort of conclusion on that.

Amazing.